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Chapter 49

I WENT DOWN to Young’s Hardware—the only such store in town—and bought myself a bicycle Then I wheeled my purchase out into the hot sun The machine was a beautiful silvery blue, with pneumatic tires to smooth out the bumps and ruts of Eudora’s dirt streets

I took e on my new machine out to the Quarters, to see Abraham Cross

On this day Abraha the Jackson & Northern tracks, then turned east on the Union Church Road This was fine open ground, vast flat fields that had been putting out prodigious quantities of cotton for generations

Everya fine old plantation house These plantations had been the center of Eudora’s wealth, the reason for its existence, since the first slaves were brought in to clear the trees from these fields

“You don’t ht out here in the open?” I said

“You stick with s that’ll make your fine blond hair fall out”

At thatpast River Oak, the Mc-Kenna faro workers were bent over under the hot sun, dragging the cloth sacks that billowed out behind them as they move

d down the row, picking cotton

We passed out of theheat into the shade, the portion of the road that curved close to the McKennas’ stately home On the front lao adorable white children in a little pink-painted cart were driving a pony in circles On the wide front veranda I could see the children’stheir play and a s there

This was a vision of the old South and the new South, all wrapped into one There, gleas shining in the sun And there, rushing across the yard in pursuit of a hen, was an ink-black woman with a red dotted kerchief wrapped around her head

Abraham was careful to ride his mule a few feet behind mine, to demonstrate his inferior position in the company of a white man I turned in the saddle “Where to?”

“Just keep riding straight on ahead to that road beyond the trees,” he said

“You don’t think that lady’s going to wonder e’re up to?”

“She don’t even see us,” said Abraham “She just happy to sit up on her porch and be rich”